I started meditating 11 years ago and have meditated regularly since.
These are some of the things that it has done for me:
It made me find a stillness within that I didn’t know existed.
I can bring that stillness and calm with me into my life. Sometimes I forget but I always come back to it.
It has helped me manage stressful or difficult periods in my life.
It clears my mind and helps me see problems in a different light and helps solutions to come without much effort.
”The light has come. I have forgiven the world.” (A Course in Miracles - Lesson 75)
Let us look at what this means. Forgiving the world does not mean that the world owes you something or that it has done you wrong.
Forgiving the world means seeing it with new eyes or in a new light. What is sometimes called the ‘lifting of the veil’ or like Bob Marley sang “take that veil from off of your eyes”.
It can happen spontaneously or through certain experiences.
What I know is that meditation gets me into this state more frequently and consistently, especially between meditation sessions.
It helps remove the clutter from our mind and gives us a new sight.
“When peace comes at last… when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it always comes with just one happy realization; “I need do nothing.””
This line from A Course in Miracles is what I realised when I started meditating 11 years ago. I realised that the inner peace, that I had heard much about but wasn’t sure what it was, was there all along and I needed to do nothing to find it. I didn’t need to meditate for hours or years to achieve it. It was there already, waiting for me.
I know it’s waiting for you too, if you haven’t found it already.
You know those moments when time falls away and the world around you seems to disappear. Even your own body seems irrelevant.
It can occur when we are with someone we love and who love us. Relationships to others are the most spontaneous and universal ways of experiencing it, and something that most can relate to.
Or it can happen when we do something that we get immersed in. I experience this when I draw portraits. It can also happen in meditation.
This is what A Course in Miracles calls the holy instant, “a miniature of eternity.”
Art by Gustav Klimt - The Kiss
Love is Reality and fear is illusion.
A Course in Miracles makes this clear distinction in the Introduction, which is only half a page long but it summarises the meaning of the course. Here is the second half of the Introduction:
“The Course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.
This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way:
Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists.
Herein lies the peace of God”
When we think too much about the idea of love being the only thing that is real, it is easy to come up with objections to why this is clearly not the case. However, I urge you to think about what is really meaningful in your life, beyond the problems you might be worrying about on a normal day. We usually realise that the moments that really mattered are the ones filled with love, compassion and joy.
We usually don’t remember what started that argument we had a year ago, which seemed so important at the time, but we do remember how it felt when we shared a moment of joy and love with someone or received acts of compassion. Those are the moments when we experience what is real, and it cannot be threatened.
A Course in Miracles refers to these moments as The Holy Instant. If we remember how we felt in those moments and consciously bring that state of mind into the present more often we can train our minds into extending the holy instant and make it a more frequent occurrence in our lives.
The Course is not often encouraging you to delve into the past or future, because this can bring despair if we remember bad things that have happened or anticipate bad things that can happen in the future. It can still be useful to go into the past to remember the ‘real’ moments so that we can be reminded to recreate them in the present.
Or in my interpretation it can be useful to look back in order to process unhealed trauma which, although it seems very real, is a result of fearful thoughts, either our own or other’s. There is one line that can be useful in relation to this and that’s: “Look at the cross, but do not dwell on it.” But more on that in another post…
When I do past life hypnotherapy on others and have it done on myself, I have found that we get led to experiences in other lifetimes that closely relate to what is active in our current lives. Like Abraham Hicks would say ‘we always receive what is most active in our vibration at any moment’.
I have come to believe that past life hypnotherapy is not so much about re-experiencing and healing the past lives. Instead it’s a powerful tool to realise what experiences and energies we are keeping up in our current lives, and be able to release their hold on us through seeing them from a higher perspective.
By going to a past life and seeing certain familiar emotions and life experiences in a different setting and context, in the relaxed state of hypnosis, we can more easily get distance to our current circumstances and be able to see it differently. When we are one step removed from it we’re more open to observing it without too much attachment. Our current life situation and circumstances can often feel too personal for us, so our subconscious takes a different route by working it out in a past life instead.
I believe we move in soul groups and several different individuals may be able to tap into the same historical lifetime. It is bigger than just one isolated soul's journey, which can easily be used as an ego tool to make ourselves special in relation to others. When we tap into universal consciousness, we expand our view and we are then able to tap into more than expected.
Even so, I really do believe we see actual historical lifetimes when we experience a past life regression. And because human emotions, issues and traumas in their essence are not just personal but something that has been experienced over and over by many others in different lives, we can use this archive of knowledge to gain perspective about our current life experience.
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A Course in Miracles says:
“Perfect love casts out fear,
If fear exists
Then there is not perfect love.
But:
Only perfect love exists.
If there is fear,
It produces a state that does not exist.”
So what does this mean? When we are in a loving mindset, everything that is not aligned with that (like fearful thoughts and old emotional patterns), get released. But if there is anything I have learned in my training to become a hypnotherapist, it’s that when the releasing of repressed emotions and memories happen, they also come up from our subconscious to be felt again.
Love or healing (which is a state of love) basically brings up everything that is not of love.
That is why when we heal and release old patterns and fears, we go through phases of feeling them. But of course in hypnotherapy, and in many other types of therapy and healing modalities, we are aware that these feelings do not derive from our reality now. Nevertheless, they feel real.
This releasing of old patterns and fears can also happen when we fall in love romantically, if it’s mutual true love. All of these old fears that we thought we had left behind can appear again, although it really has nothing to do with the actual reality we are experiencing.
This is “the state that does not exist” in that it is not true but it is a stage of the healing process. The only thing that is ultimately true is the love that made these fears come up.
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When I was recently in a period of having emotional flashbacks to past events, triggered by new situations that has nothing to do with the original cause, I opened A Course in Miracles and landed on these words:
“The Holy Spirit’s use of memory is quite apart from time. He does not seek to use it as a means to keep the past, but rather as a way to let is go.”
“When ancient memories of hate appear, remember that their cause is gone. And so you cannot understand what they are for. Let not the cause that you would give them now be what it was that made them what they were, or seemed to be.” (A Course in Miracles, p 590)
Even just reading the words made my nervous system calm down and come to the realisation that these are feelings from the past resurfacing. I realised I cannot let the past dictate my current reactions and feelings. They come up to be released.
The Holy Spirit could be seen as another word for, or a bridge to, the Higher Self or what is also called the Subconscious in Hypnotherapy. That larger part of ourselves that sees the bigger picture and holds all memories and insights that we don’t always access with our conscious mind.
In Hypnotherapy we can actually reach the repressed memories themselves, not just the residual feelings of them, and slowly untangle, process and release the influence it has on our lives now.
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Sun deities and the sun as a symbol, are usually associated with masculine energy and the moon and nighttime are more often associated with feminine energy. Even the wording Son (Sun) of God has associations to the masculine aspect of God and there are numerous examples of male sun deities, some of them being Ra, Helios, Liza, Lugh (Ancient Epyptian, Greek, West African, Celtic).
There are some exceptions to this though, and one is found in the mythology of my own Scandinavian ancestry. In the old Norse religion the sun was represented as the goddess Sol, also called Sunna. Her brother was Mani, representing the moon.
Sol and Mani ride through the sky in horse drawn chariots, like many other sun deities are described as doing. The chariots are chased through the sky by the wolves Skoll (Mockery) and Hati (Hate). During Ragnarok when the world descends back into chaos the wolves will overtake the chariots.
In one of the poems in the the Poetic Edda, a figure called Svalinn rides in Sol’s chariot and holds a shield between her and the Earth. Without it, the Earth would be consumed in flames. This sounds very much as a mythological description of the Earth’s magnetosphere, which is even described within astronomy as a ‘gatekeeper’ protecting us from solar wind and cosmic rays.
How the Old Norse, and other ancient people, knew about these cosmic phenomena through their mythologies is an interesting question to ponder.
There are more examples of feminine sun deities such as Amaterasu, the Japanese sun goddess, Arinna - Hittite (Syrian) sun goddess and Shemesh/Shepesh, Ugarit sun goddess.
Join me for Divine Feminine Ancestry & Soul Lineage where we will explore the mythologies of our ancestors over 3 months. Sign up here.
If we are going to talk about the divine feminine we also need to pay attention to her counterpart, the divine masculine. He can be found within ourselves as well as in other people around us.
The divine masculine energy holds space for the divine feminine to create and bloom. It’s strong but it doesn’t push its own agenda or try to control surroundings. It creates the practical circumstances and safe spaces for us to reach our highest potential. It opens doors and wants to be of service to the divine feminine creative force. Not in a subservient way but in co-creation.
This is where the true King archetype is. It is no coincidence that Yeshua (Jesus) is called a king because that is what he embodied. He was Christ Consciousness (the anointed), devoted to the Divine.
Kings don’t put other people down or control (this is the Weakling - passive shadow of the King Archetype - the shadow masculine, which is unfortunately something that is highly present in this world). Kings lift people and his surroundings up. It requires a sacrifice of the small self, or ego, for the good of others and it’s what Kara Gillighan calls a warrior art.
We all have this within us but sometimes we come across people who seem to embody this more than others. They are the true Kings of this world but are usually not seen in that way because they don’t hold themselves up as that.
Art by John Bauer
The Norns are female beings in Norse mythology who create and control fate. They spin the threads of the fate of both humans and Gods at the foot of Yggdrasil, the cosmic tree holding together the 9 realms in Norse cosmology.
In Völuspá, one of the poems in the Old Norse Poetic Edda, they are described as not being a part of any of the other beings mentioned in Norse mythology. They are in their own category. Their names are Urd - The Past, Verdandi - What Is Presently Coming Into Being and Skuld - What Shall Be. In Greek mythology, there are similar beings or goddesses called the Moirai (Fates).
Because the Norns control fate they are often feared. I believe the fear is misplaced. The Norns weave and record a persons fate, but I don't see fate as being outside of our free will or control. In fact, the word Skuld, which is the name of the third Norn of What Shall Be literally means 'blame' or 'responsibility' in Swedish, my first language. Things happen that seem to be out of our control, but if we look at the picture from a soul level over the course of one or many lifetimes, we would find that the web of events are related and both the good and the bad are parts of our soul's growth. And most importantly, we always have a choice.
I cannot help but to relate them to what I know about the Akashic Records, also called the Book of Life. This is also closely related to Karma, or cause and effect.
In Hypnotherapy where a person is taken to the stage where their soul is in between lives, there are accounts of a ‘Judgement Board’. These are wise beings, usually three of them, who are there not to judge, but to assist the individual soul in evaluating the life lived and making recommendations for the next life. But the judgement of this evaluation is made by the soul itself. It gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘the last judgement’. It is not some entity outside of us making this judgement. We make it ourselves in our expanded state, and it’s much more forgiving than what we have been told to believe.
Once we become aware of this we can become an active participant in the weaving of our fate and our soul's path.
I have created a 3 month journey with our Divine Feminine Ancestry and Soul Lineage. We will connect deeply with our ancestral mythology and how it can help our soul growth, regardless of where your ancestry is from. I will use my own Scandinavian/Norse ancestry as a starting point. Learn more here.
You can book a Past Life Regression Hypnotherapy session with me here.
May the divine feminine rise from all ancestry lines and soul lineages...
Art by Johan Egerkrans and Unknown
I have lived most of my adult life in the British Isles, more specifically London. This is where I found my spiritual awakening and my interest in mythology.
I therefore feel a special connection to those lands and to the mythologies found there.
The Lady of the Lake is a fairy-like enchantress in the Arthurian Legends who lives in a castle beneath a lake around the island of Avalon. She gave the sword Excalibur to Arthur, which is attributed with magical powers and the true sovereignty of Britain.
As a hypnotherapist I am highly aware of the power of our subconscious mind over our conscious mind.
In Celtic mythology the otherworlds of the fairies, elves and god-like creatures are often described as being underground, such as the fairy mounds that are the homes of the supernatural race Aos sí. This is also the case in the stories about the Lady of the Lake who lives in her fairy realm beneath the lake. Water usually symbolising emotions and the castle beneath the lake could be used as a metaphor for the subconscious.
The sword can be seen to symbolise the power and authority that the subconscious wields over us and if we become aware of our subconscious patterns we can gain some power back to be able to influence our subconscious and transform ourselves, by regaining control of our subconscious patterns.
My 3 month long offering Divine Feminine Ancestry and Soul Lineage is back. We will go deeper into how we can use our own ancestral mythologies as catalysts for transformation within ourselves. Along with video teachings, you will be able to access your subconscious through guided mediations and hypnotherapy. Learn more here.
May the Divine Feminine rise from all ancestry lines and soul lineages...
I have always felt that there is a mystical presence in the forest, by a lake or by the sea, as if you are not completely alone, even when there is no one else around. It installs a feeling of respect as if I know that I’m in a domain where I, as a human, need to be vigilant and show respect.
In Swedish Folklore my blood ancestors named this presence and personified it as the Skogsrå, Sjörå and Havsrå (skog = forest, sjö = lake, hav = sea, rå = guardian/keeper). They are benevolent if you show respect to the landscape, that they are the guardians of. If you do not, there might be dire consequences.
These guardian spirits are depicted as female or feminine energies. There are some male nature and farm spirits in Scandinavian Folklore. But for the forest, the lake and the sea I feel it’s appropriate to see them as feminine energies and as aspects of the great Earth mother. They can also be seen as ‘elementals’ instead of spirits or as nature deities, which is something that many cultures have in their mythologies in different forms, often in female form.
The Scandinavian female nature spirits were seen as sexually deviant and as creatures who lured men with their seductive powers. Forces of nature are powerful and uncontrollable. Female sexuality has also historically been seen as dangerous, deviant and even something that needs to be controlled. It is often still looked at as, if not deviant, then at least mysterious and perplexing.
By reconnecting to these personifications of nature in our own ancestral cultures we can reconnect to the natural forces themselves and to our own sacred sexuality and connection to the Earth as our primal mother.
If you want to hear more, I invite you to sign up for my free offering Divine Feminine Ancestral Archetypes here.
May the Divine Feminine rise from all ancestry lines and soul lineages...
The Akashic Records are the ethereal records of all events, lives, actions, feelings and experiences that have ever occurred since the beginning of time, and it may even contain the possibilities if what will occur.
There are versions of these records mentioned in most religions and spiritual belief systems. In Christianity they are called the Book of Life (“In the last days these books shall be opened.”). In the Tibetan tradition there are the Etheric Records and in Jewish beliefs the Book of Remembrance.
I believe that our souls reincarnate as a way to expand the consciousness of our Source/God/Universal Consciousness that we are all a part of. I believe God experiences through us and our different incarnations.
We forget most of our other lifetimes when we are born into this life. We are probably meant to mostly forget because if we remembered everything it would possibly interfere with the new life experience we are having, especially if we are not ready for that information.
Each life is meant to feel new. However, our higher selves still remember everything and uses the memories and wisdom from all of our lives to guide us in this life. These memories are also stored in our subconscious and we have access to them.
Because we are all one in true Reality, I do not think it is as simple as one soul reincarnating in specific lifetimes, although I believe our soul's blueprint relate more to certain lives than others.
In my view, we move in soul groups and several different individuals may be able to tap into the same historical lifetime. It is bigger than just one isolated soul's journey, which can easily be used as an ego tool to make ourselves special in relation to others. When we tap into universal consciousness, we expand our view and we are then able to tap into more than we expected.
Even so, I really do believe we see actual historical lifetimes when we experience a past life regression and for those of us who are really interested in history, this is a gold mine of knowledge.
So why would we want to access these memories now? I think many of us are open and ready to receive some of this information about our soul’s many lives, to open our book of life, to expand our view of who we are and to realise our oneness with everyone and everything. It moves us beyond our limited perception of ourselves and opens us to a new way of looking at life.
If you are one of those who is ready for this I invite you to book a Past Life Regression Hypnotherapy session with me. Click here for more information and to book sessions.
Artwork by Gilbert Williams from Oracle of the Hidden Worlds
”She is a being not of this world,...She tried to live like an ordinary woman; but some women cannot live an ordinary life. She tried to walk in the common ways; but some women cannot put their feet to that path.”
~ Quote from The Lady of the Rivers by Philippa Gregory, Photography by Nils-Olof Tägt
When Yeshua went through the most gruesome, horrible human trial that anyone can go through, he found peace, love and forgiveness in the middle of it. For me the lesson is this, if he could do that in the face of violent death, and as the story (or myth if you like) goes, even overcame physical death, then we can find love, peace and forgiveness in every little ego death and less severe human trials that we face every day. He was here to show us this through the most extreme example.
Simply put:
"The message of the crucifixion is perfectly clear: Teach only love, for that is what you are. If you interpret the crucifixion in any other way, you are using it as a weapon for assault rather than as the call for peace for which it was intended."
~ A Course in Miracles
One day all that is hidden will be clear as day.
What now resides in the land of dusk
will shine in the light of dawn.
How easy our path will be,
carrying us swiftly to that holy place
where we finally belong.
~ My own translation from Swedish of a poem by my great-uncle Lasse Forsberg
Art by Michael Pickett
We are all different faces of the same God, playing out different roles and experiences, equally loved by the one Source.
We relate more to some than others because of similarity in energy and frequency, but we are all one.
It’s a dream, a play. Some of us wake up in the dream, becoming conscious of our oneness with Spirit, which is infinite Love, and with everyone else.
We still play our roles and might even play around in different roles within one lifetime, all the while conscious when doing it.
This is awakening. Nothing more, nothing less…
I went for a wintry walk in central Stockholm this week, my home town since last year, and also the city where I was born. I have never lived here as an adult until now so I am still learning my bearings. I was with my mum who planned for us to walk to a specific cafe she likes.
When we got there and sat down by the window I looked across the street at the large church building we just passed, situated just opposite the cafe. Nothing peculiar about it. Stockholm is full of old churches. Even so, I asked my mum what the name of the church is (she knows almost everything about Stockholm). She said most churches in Stockholm are named after old Swedish kings and queens, but this one is an exception.
The name of the church: Maria Magdalena.
I smiled to myself and thought ‘Of course it is’. I have been on a Magdalene awakening path for some time, reading books, listening to teachings, but lately she’s been with me more acutely, sending me clear signs, because I asked her to.
After coffee we went inside the church and because I have become so aware of Magdalene/Grail symbolism I saw it straight away: Fleur-de-lis, the Knights Templar cross, roses, pentacles. I feel like I now have ‘eyes to See’ when even a few years ago I wouldn’t have to the same extent.
I’m excited to continue looking and seeing.
Art by Linzy Arnott ~ Mary Magdalene
Tomorrow 13th December is the Feast Day of Saint Lucia or Saint Lucy. She is saint and early Christian martyr who lived between the years 283 AD and 304 AD in Syracuse on the island of Sicily in the Roman Empire. Her name comes form the latin word lux meaning light.
As a context to this, the Christianity that existed in the first 3 centuries AD was not the Christianity that we know and have seen in the last 1700 years.
The Roman Empire officially adopted Christianity in 380 AD and it was granted legal status by the emperor Constantine only about 70 years before that. This was the beginning of the Roman Catholic Church and all of the institutional religious Christianity that followed.
So in that context, Lucia lived before this time, and was one of the last martyrs to die in the last persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire (not the last ever persecution of Christians).
The Christianity before 300 AD was naturally closer to the original teachings, and had more in common with Gnostic thought, although there were already groups who had a more in common with Orthodox Christianity.
In many ways, Christianity was an underground grass roots movement and they met in secret in the Catacombs (underground tunnels). There are also records of women being bishops in the early Christian communities but this is another story for another post. The heavily patriarchal aspect came later.
The irony is that Lucia became a saint in the very same Catholic Church that would possibly have seen her and her peers as heretics if she would have lived later.
The story goes that Lucia came from a wealthy Christian family but was promised to marry a non-Christian when her father died and the family was without a male guardian. She instead vowed to remain unmarried and to give her dowry to Christians who were hiding from persecution in the catacombs.
Lucia wore a crown of candles to light her way through the underground tunnels and brought food to the people hiding. The man who was meant to marry her subsequently reported her to the Roman authorities and they decided to have her sold into slavery as punishment. The legend has it that the guards who came to arrest her were not able to remove her. They then decided to kill her immediately by pouring oil over her and setting her on fire, but she wouldn't burn. They were finally able to kill her by sword. Later stories say that Lucia foretold the end of persecution before her death.
The miraculous things that she did when they tried to kill her, if true, shows that she was a spiritual master. What happened to her shows resemblance to later persecutions of spiritually adept women, and some men, during the Inquisition and the so called Witch Burnings or Burning Times.
If Lucia had lived and been persecuted during the Inquisition she would very likely have been seen as a witch for her spiritual powers. The institutionalised Churches at the time of the Inquisition did not want people to have a direct connection with God or their own Divine Source, what is also called Gnosis - direct experience of the Divine.
Saint Lucia Day has become a lasting tradition in Sweden, my home country, and it has become linked to Jul (Christmas) and advent. Girls dress up as Saint Lucia, with a crown of candles, a white robe like dress and and a red belt to symbolise her martyrdom.
It’s unclear why it has become a tradition here but most probably it’s because she is a light bringer, and because December is so dark and cold in Scandinavia, this is very welcomed.
13th December used to fall on the Winter Solstice, which is now 21st December. There may also be links to the Norse goddess Sol or Sunna, who’s name means sun and represents the return of lighter days.
13th December has been seen in Swedish folk tradition as a night when the veil to the spiritual realm is especially thin. During the celebrations children, and some adults, also dress up as angels or tomtar, a type of elemental beings in Swedish folklore slightly similar to the gnomes. I love and embrace all of the different layers and the syncretism of this holiday.
On the beginning of this particular light portal of December 2020 I invite Saint Lucia to guide us and for the angels and elementals to be present.
Art by Theophilia, Unknown and Lennart Helje
